False Scent

Chapter eight Pattern Completed

Charles Templeton lay face down, as if he had fallen forward, with his head toward the foot of the bed that had been made up for him in the study. One arm hung to the floor, the other was outstretched beyond the end of the bed. The back of his neck was empurpled under its margin of thin white hair. His pyjama jacket was dragged up, revealing an expanse of torso — old, white and flaccid. When Alleyn raised him and held him in a sitting position, his head lolled sideways, his mouth and eyes opened and a flutter of sound wavered in his throat. Dr. Harkness leant over him, pinching up the skin of his forearm to admit the needle. Fox hovered nearby. Florence, her knuckles clenched between her teeth, stood just inside the door. Charles seemed to be unaware of these four onlookers; his gaze wandered past them, fixed itself in terror on the fifth; the short person who stood pressed back against the wall in shadow at the end of the room.

The sound in his throat was shaped with great difficulty into one word. “No!” it whispered. “No! No!”

Dr. Harkness withdrew the needle.

“What is it?” Alleyn said. “What do you want to tell us?”

The eyes did not blink or change their direction, but after a second or two they lost focus, glazed, and remained fixed. The jaw dropped, the body quivered and sank.

Dr. Harkness leant over it for some time and then drew back.

“Gone,” he said.

Alleyn laid his burden down and covered it.

In a voice that they had not heard from him before. Dr. Harkness said, “He was all right ten minutes ago. Settled. Quiet. Something’s gone wrong here and I’ve got to hear what it was.” He turned on Florence. “Well?”

Florence, with an air that was half combative, half frightened, moved forward, keeping her eyes on Alleyn.

“Yes,” Alleyn said, answering her look, “we must hear from you. You raised the alarm. What happened?”

“That’s what I’d like to know!” she said at once. “I did the right thing, didn’t I? I called the doctor. Now!”

“You’ll do the right thing again, if you please, by telling me what happened before you called him.”

She darted a glance at the small motionless figure in shadow at the end of the room and wetted her lips.

“Come on, now,” Fox said. “Speak up.”

Standing where she was, a serio-comic figure under her, panoply of tin hair curlers, she did tell her story.

After Dr. Harkness had given his order, she and — again that sidelong glance — she and Mrs. Plumtree had made up the bed in the study. Dr. Harkness had helped Mr. Templeton undress and had seen him into bed and they had all waited until he was settled down, comfortably. Dr. Harkness had left after giving orders that he was to be called if wanted. Florence had then gone to the pantry to fill a second hot-water bottle. This had taken some time as she had been obliged to boil a kettle. When she returned to the hall she had heard voices raised in the study. It seemed that she had paused outside the door. Alleyn had a picture of her, a hot-water bottle under her arm, listening avidly. She had heard Mrs. Plumtree’s voice but had been unable to distinguish any words. Then, she said, she had heard Mr. Templeton cry “No!” three times, just as he did before he died, only much louder; as if, Florence said, he was frightened. After that there had been a clatter and Mrs. Plumtree had suddenly become audible. She had shouted, Florence reported, at the top of her voice, “I’ll put a stop to it,” Mr. Templeton had given a loud cry and Florence had burst into the room.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “And what did you find?”

A scene, it appeared, of melodrama. Mrs. Plumtree with the poker grasped and upraised, Mr. Templeton sprawled along the bed, facing her.

“And when they seen me,” Florence said, “she dropped the poker in the hearth and he gasped ‘Florrie, don’t let ’er’ and then he took a turn for the worse and I see he was very bad. So I said, ‘Don’t you touch ’im. Don’t you dare,’ and I fetched the doctor like you say. And God’s my witness,” Florence concluded, “if she isn’t the cause of his death! As good as if she’d struck him down, ill and all as he was, and which she’d of done if I hadn’t come in when I did and which she’d do to me now if it wasn’t for you gentlemen.”

She stopped breathless. There was a considerable pause. “Well!” she demanded. “Don’t you believe it? All right, then. Ask her. Go on. Ask her!”

“Everything in its turn,” Alleyn said. “That will do from you for the moment. Stay where you are.” He turned to the short motionless figure in the shadows. “Come along,” he said. “You can’t avoid it, you know. Come along.”

She moved out into the light. Her small nose and the areas over her cheekbones were still patched with red, but otherwise her face was a dreadful colour. She said, automatically, it seemed, “You’re a wicked girl, Floy.”

“Never mind about that,” Alleyn said. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

She looked steadily up into his face. Her mouth was shut like a trap, but her eyes were terrified.

“Look here, Ninn,” Dr. Harkness began very loudly. Alleyn raised a finger and he stopped short.

“Has Florence,” Alleyn asked, “spoken the truth? I mean as to facts. As to what she saw and heard when she came back to this room?”

She nodded, very slightly.

“You had the poker in your hand. You dropped it when she came in. Mr. Templeton said, ‘Florrie, don’t let her.’ That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And before she came in you had said, very loudly, to Mr. Templeton ‘I’ll put a stop to it’? Did you say this?”

“Yes.”

“What were you going to put a stop to?”

Silence.

“Was it something Mr. Templeton had said he would do?”

She shook her head.

For a lunatic second or two Alleyn was reminded of a panel game on television. He saw the Plumtree face in close-up; tight-lipped, inimical, giving nothing away, winning the round.

He looked at Fox. “Would you take Florence into the hall? You too, Dr. Harkness, if you will?”

“I’m not going,” Florence said. “You can’t make me.”

“Oh yes, I can,” Alleyn rejoined tranquilly, “but you’d be very foolish to put it to the test. Out you go, my girl.”

Fox approached her. “You keep your hands off me!” she said.

“Now, now!” Fox rumbled cosily. He opened the door. For a moment she looked as if she would show fight and then, with a lift of her chin, she went out. Fox followed her.

Dr. Harkness said, “There are things to be done. I mean…” He gestured at the covered form on the bed.

“I know. I don’t expect to be long. Wait for me in the hall, will you, Harkness?”

The door shut behind them.

For perhaps ten seconds Alleyn and that small, determined and miserable little woman looked at each other.

Then he said, “It’s got to come out, you know. You’ve been trying to save him, haven’t you?”

Her hands moved convulsively, and she looked in terror at the bed.

“No, no,” Alleyn said. “Not there. I’m not talking about him. You didn’t care about him. You were trying to shield the boy, weren’t you? You did what you did for Richard Dakers.”

She broke into a passion of weeping and from then until the end of the case he had no more trouble with Ninn.

When it was over he sent her up to her room.

“Well,” he said to Fox, “now for the final and far from delectable scene. We should, of course, have prevented all this, but I’m damned if I see how. We couldn’t arrest on what we’d got. Unless they find some trace of Slaypest in the scent-spray my reading of the case will never be anything but an unsupported theory.”

“They ought to be coming through with the result before long.”

“You might ring up and see where they’ve got to.”

Fox dialled a number. There was a tap at the door and Philpott looked in. He stared at the covered body on the bed.

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “A death. Mr. Templeton.”

“By violence, sir?”

“Not by physical violence. Heart disease. What is it, Philpott?”

“It’s the lot in there, sir. They’re getting very restive, especially Mr. Dakers and the Colonel. Wondering what was wrong with”—he looked again at the bed—“with him, sir.”

“Yes. Will you ask Mr. Dakers and Colonel Warrenderto go into the small sitting-room next door. I’ll be there in a moment. Oh, and Philpott, I think you might ask Miss Lee to come too. And you may tell the others they will have very little longer to wait.”

“Sir,” said Philpott and withdrew.

Fox was talking into the telephone. “Yes. Yes. I’ll tell him. He’ll be very much obliged. Thank you.”

He hung up. “They were just going to ring. They’ve found an identifiable trace inside the bulb of the scent-spray.”

“Have they indeed? That provides the complete answer.”

“So you were right, Mr. Alleyn.”

“And what satisfaction,” Alleyn said wryly, “is to be had out of that?”

He went to the bed and turned back the sheet. The eyes, unseeing, still stared past him. The imprint of a fear, already nonexistent, still disfigured the face. Alleyn looked down at it for a second or two. “What unhappiness!” he said and closed the eyes.

“He had a lot to try him,” Fox observed with his customary simplicity.

“He had indeed, poor chap.”

“So did they all, if it comes to that. She must have been a very vexing sort of lady. There’ll have to be a p.m., Mr. Alleyn.”

“Yes, of course. All right. I’ll see these people next door.”

He re-covered the face and went out.

Dr. Harkness and Florence were in the hall, watched over by a Yard reinforcement. Alleyn said, “I think you’d better come in with me, if you will, Harkness.” And to Florence, “You’ll stay where you are for the moment, if you please.”

Harkness followed him into the boudoir.

It had been created by Bertie Saracen in an opulent mood and contrasted strangely with the exquisite austerity of the study. “Almost indecently you, darling!” Bertie had told Miss Bellamy and, almost indecently, it was so.

Its present occupants — Richard, Anelida and Warrender — were standing awkwardly in the middle of this room, overlooked by an enormous and immensely vivacious portrait in pastel of Mary Bellamy. Charles, photographed some twenty years ago, gazed mildly from the centre of an occasional table. To Alleyn there was something atrociously ironic in this circumstance.

Richard demanded at once: “What is it? What happened? Is Charles…?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “It’s bad news. He collapsed a few minutes ago.”

“But…? You don’t mean…?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Richard said, “Anelida! It’s Charles. He means Charles has died. Doesn’t he?”

“Why,” she said fiercely, “must these things happen to you. Why?”

Dr. Harkness went up to him. “Sorry, old boy,” he said, “I tried but it was no good. It might have happened any time during the last five years, you know.”

Richard stared blankly at him. “My God!” he cried out. “You can’t talk like that!”

“Steady, old chap. You’ll realize, when you think it over. Any time.”

“I don’t believe you. It’s because of everything else. It’s because of Mary and…” Richard turned on Alleyn. “You’d no right to subject him to all this. It’s killed him. You’d no right. If it hadn’t been for you it needn’t have happened.”

Alleyn said very compassionately, “That may be true. He was in great distress. It may even be that for him this was the best solution.”

“How dare you say that!” Richard exclaimed and then, “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think he’d pretty well got to the end of his tether? He’d lost the thing he most valued in life, hadn’t he?”

“I–I want to see him.”

Alleyn remembered Charles’s face. “Then you shall,” he promised, “presently.”

“Yes,” Harkness agreed quickly. “Presently.”

“For the moment,” Alleyn said, turning to Anelida, “I suggest that you take him up to his old room and give him a drink. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” Anelida said. “That’s the thing.” She put her hand in Richard’s. “Coming?”

He looked down at her. “I wonder,” he said, “what on earth I should do without you, Anelida.”

“Come on,” she said, and they went out together.

Alleyn nodded to Harkness and he too went out.

An affected little French clock above the fireplace cleared its throat, broke into a perfect frenzy of silvery chimes and then struck midnight. Inspector Fox came into the room and shut the door.

Alleyn looked at Maurice Warrender.

“And now,” he said, “there must be an end to equivocation. I must have the truth.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Warrender, and could scarcely have sounded less convincing.

“I wonder why people always say that when they know precisely what one does mean. However, I’d better tell you. A few minutes ago, immediately after Charles Templeton died, I talked to the nanny, Mrs. Plumtree, who had been alone with him at the moment of his collapse. I told her that I believed she had uttered threats, that she had acted in this way because she thought Templeton was withholding information which would clear your son from suspicion of murder and that under the stress of this scene, Templeton suffered the heart attack from which he died. I told her your son was in no danger of arrest and she then admitted the whole story. I now tell you, too, that your son is in no danger. If you have withheld information for fear of incriminating him, you may understand that you have acted mistakenly.”

Warrender seemed to be on the point of speaking but instead turned abruptly away and stood very still.

“You refused to tell me of the threats Mrs. Templeton uttered in the conservatory and I got them, after great difficulty it’s true, from the other people who were there. When I asked you if you had quarrelled with Charles Templeton you denied it. I believe that, in fact, you had quarrelled with him and that it happened while you were together in the study before I saw you for the first time. For the whole of that interview you scarcely so much as looked at each other. He was obviously distressed by your presence and you were violently opposed to rejoining him there. I must ask you again. Had you quarrelled?”

Warrender muttered, “If you call it a quarrel.”

“Was it about Richard Dakers?” Alleyn waited. “I think it was,” he said, “but of course that’s mere speculation and open, if you like, to contradiction.”

Warrender squared his shoulders. “What’s all this leading up to?” he demanded. “An arrest?”

“Surely you’ve heard of the usual warning. Come, sir, you did have a scene with Charles Templeton and I believe it was about Richard Dakers. Did you tell Templeton you were the father?”

“I did not,” he said quickly.

“Did he know you were the father?”

“Not… We agreed from the outset that it was better that he shouldn’t know. That nobody should know. Better on all counts.”

“You haven’t really answered my question, have you? Shall I put it this way? Did Templeton learn for the first time, this afternoon, that Dakers is your son?”

“Why should you suppose anything of the sort?”

“Your normal relationship appears to have been happy, yet at this time, when one would have expected you all to come together in your common trouble, he showed a vehement disinclination to see Dakers — or you.”

Warrender made an unexpected gesture. He flung out his hands and lifted his shoulders. “Very well,” he said.

“And you didn’t tell him.” Alleyn walked up to him and looked him full in the face. “She told him,” he said. “Didn’t she? Without consulting you, without any consideration for you or the boy. Because she was in one of those tantrums that have become less and less controllable. She made you spray that unspeakable scent over her in his presence, I suppose to irritate him. You went out and left them together. And she broke the silence of thirty years and told him.”

“You can’t possibly know.”

“When she left the room a minute or two later she shouted at the top of her voice: ‘Which only shows how wrong you were. You can get out whenever you like, my friend, and the sooner the better.’ Florence had gone. You had gone. She was speaking to her husband. Did she tell you?”

“Tell me! What the hell…”

“Did she tell you what she’d said to Templeton?”

Warrender turned away to the fireplace, leant his arm on the shelf and hid his face.

“All right!” he stammered. “All right! What does it matter, now. All right.”

“Was it during the party?”

He made some kind of sound, apparently in assent.

“Before or after the row in the conservatory?”

“After.” He didn’t raise his head and his voice sounded as if it didn’t belong to him. “I tried to stop her attacking the girl.”

“And that turned her against you? Yes, I see.”

“I was following them, the girl and her uncle, and she whispered it. ‘Charles knows about Dicky.’ It was quite dreadful to see her look like that. I–I simply walked out — I…” He raised his head and looked at Alleyn. “It was indescribable.”

“And your great fear after that was that she would tell the boy?”

He said nothing.

“As, of course, she did. Her demon was let loose. She took him up to her room and told him. They were, I daresay, the last words she spoke.”

Warrender said, “You assume — you say these things — you…” and was unable to go on. His eyes were wet and bloodshot and his face grey. He looked quite old. “I don’t know what’s come over me,” he said.

Alleyn thought he knew.

“It’s not much cop,” he said, “when a life’s preoccupation turns out to have been misplaced. It seems to me that a man in such a position would rather see the woman dead than watch her turning into a monster.”

“Why do you say these things to me. Why!”

“Isn’t it so?”

With a strange parody of his habitual mannerism he raised a shaking hand to his tie and pulled at it.

“I understand,” he said. “You’ve been very clever, I suppose.”

“Not very, I’m afraid.”

Warrender looked up at the beaming portrait of Mary Bellamy. “There’s nothing left,” he said. “Nothing. What do you want me to do?”

“I must speak to Dakers and then to those people in there. I think I must ask you to join us.”

“Very well,” Warrender said.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Thank you. If I may.”

Alleyn looked at Fox who went out and returned with a tumbler and the decanter that Alleyn had seen on the table between Warrender and Charles at his first encounter with them.

“Whisky,” Fox said. “If that’s agreeable. Shall I pour it out, sir?”

Warrender took it neat and in one gulp. “I’m very much obliged to you,” he said and straightened his back. The ghost of a smile distorted his mouth. “One more,” he said, “and I shall be ready for anything, isn’t it?”

Alleyn said, “I am going to have a word with Dakers before I see the others.”

“Are you going to — to tell him?”

“I think it best to do so, yes.”

“Yes. I see. Yes.”

“When you are ready, Fox,” Alleyn said and went out.

“He’ll make it as easy as possible, sir,” Fox said comfortably. “You may be sure of that.”

“Easy!” said Warrender, and made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Easy!”

The persons sitting in the drawing-room were assembled there for the last time. In a few weeks Mary Bellamy’s house would be transformed into the West End offices of a new venture in television, and a sedan chair, for heaven knows what reason, would adorn the hall. Bertie Saracen’s decor, taken over in toto, would be the background for the frenzied bandying about of new gimmicks and Charles Templeton’s study a waiting-room for disengaged actors.

At the moment it had an air of stability. Most of its occupants, having exhausted each in his or her own kind their capacity for anxiety, anger or compassion, had settled down into apathy. They exchanged desultory remarks, smoked continuously and occasionally helped themselves, rather self-consciously, to the drinks that Gracefield had provided. P.C. Philpott remained alert in his corner.

It was Dr. Harkness who, without elaboration, announced Charles Templeton’s death and that indeed shook them into a state of flabbergasted astonishment. When Richard came in, deathly pale, with Anelida, they all had to pull themselves together before they found anything at all to say to him. They did, indeed, attempt appropriate remarks, but it was clear to Anelida that their store of consolatory offerings was spent. However heartfelt their sympathy, they were obliged to fall back on their technique in order to express it. Pinky Cavendish broke into this unreal state of affairs by suddenly giving Richard a kiss and saying warmly, “It’s no good, darling. There really is just literally nothing we can say or do, but we wish with all our hearts that there was, and Anelida must be your comfort. There!”

“Pinky,” Richard said unevenly, “you really are no end of a darling. I’m afraid I can’t — I can’t… I’m sorry. I’m just not reacting much to anything.”

“Exactly,” Marchant said. “How well one understands. The proper thing, of course, would be for one to leave you to yourself, which unfortunately this Yard individual at the moment won’t allow.”

“He did send to say it wouldn’t be long now,” Bertie pointed out nervously.

“Do you suppose,” Pinky asked, “that means he’s going to arrest somebody?”

“Who can tell! Do you know what!” Bertie continued very rapidly and in an unnatural voice. “I don’t mind betting every man jack of us is madly wondering what all the others think about him. Or her. I know I am. I keep saying to myself, ‘Can any of them think I darted upstairs instead of into the loo, and did it!’ I suppose it’s no use asking you all for a frank opinion is it? It would be taking an advantage.”

“I don’t think it of you,” Pinky said at once. “I promise you, darling.”

“Pinky! Nor I of you. Never for a moment. And I don’t believe it of Anelida or Richard. Do you?”

“Never for a moment,” she said firmly. “Absolutely not.”

“Well,” Bertie continued, inspired by Pinky’s confidence, “I should like to know if any of you does suppose it might be me.” Nobody answered. “I can’t help feeling immensely gratified,” Bertie said. “Thank you. Now. Shall I tell you which of you I think could — just—under frightful provocation — do something violent all of a sudden?”

“Me, I suppose,” Gantry said. “I’m a hot-tempered man.”

“Yes. Timmy dear, you! But only in boiling hot blood with one blind swipe, not really meaning to. And that doesn’t seem to fit the bill at all. One wants a calculating iceberg of a person for this job, doesn’t one?”

There followed a period of hideous discomfort, during which nobody looked at anybody else.

“An idle flight of speculation, I’m afraid, Bertie,” said Marchant. “Would you be very kind and bring me a drink?”

“But of course,” said Bertie, and did so.

Gantry glanced at Richard and said, “Obviously there’s no connection — apart from the shock of Mary’s death having precipitated it — between Charles’s tragedy — and hers.” Nobody spoke and he added half-angrily, “Well, is there! Harkness — you were there.”

Dr. Harkness said quickly, “I don’t know what’s in Alleyn’s mind.”

“Where’s that momumental, that superb old ham, the Colonel? Why’s he gone missing all of a sudden?” Gantry demanded. “Sorry, Dicky, he’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“He’s… Yes,” Richard said after a long pause. “He is. I think he’s with Alleyn.”

“Not,” Marchant coolly remarked, “under arrest, one trusts.”

“I believe not,” Richard said. He turned his back on Marchant and sat beside Anelida on the sofa.

“Oh lud!” Bertie sighed, “how wearing has been this long, long day and how frightened in a vague sort of way I continue to feel. Never mind. Toujours l’audace.”

The handle of the door into the hall was heard to turn. Everybody looked up. Florence walked round the leather screen. “If you’ll just wait, Miss,” the constable said and retired. Philpott cleared his throat.

Richard said, “Come in, Floy. Come and sit down.”

She glanced stonily at him, walked into the farthest corner of the room and sat on the smallest chair. Pinky looked as if she’d like to say something friendly to her, but the impulse came to nothing and a heavy silence again fell upon the company.

It was broken by the same sound and a heavier tread. Bertie half-rose from his seat, gave a little cry of frustration and sank back again as Colonel Warrender made his entry, very erect and looking at no one in particular.

“We were just talking about you,” said Bertie fretfully.

Richard stood up. “Come and join us,” he said, and pushed a chair towards the sofa.

“Thank you, old boy,” Warrender said awkwardly, and did so.

Anelida leant towards him and after a moment’s hesitation put her hand on his knee. “I intend,” she said under her breath, “to bully Richard into marrying me. Will you be on my side and give us your blessing?”

He drew his brows together and stared at her. He made an unsuccessful attempt to speak, hit her hand painfully hard with his own and ejaculated, “Clumsy ass. Hurt you, isn’t it? Ah — Bless you.”

“O.K.,” said Anelida and looked at Richard. “Now, you see, darling, you’re sunk.”

There was a sound of masculine voices in the hall, Pinky said. “Oh dear!” and Gantry, “Ah, for God’s sake!” Marchant finished his drink quickly and P.C. Philpott rose to his feet. So, after a mulish second or two, did Florence.

This time it was Alleyn who came round the leather screen.

There was only one place in the room from which he could take them all in at one glance and that was the hearthrug. Accordingly, he went to it and stood there like the central figure in some ill-assembled conversation piece.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “to have kept you hanging about. It was unavoidable and it won’t be for much longer. Until a short time ago you were still, all of you, persons of importance. From the police point of view, I mean, of course. It was through you that we hoped to assemble the fragments and fit them into their pattern. The pattern is now complete and our uncomfortable association draws to its end. Tomorrow there will be an inquest and you will be required, most of you, to appear at it. The coroner’s jury will hear your evidence and mine and one can only guess at what they will make of it. But you have all become too far involved for me to use any sort of evasion. Already some of you are suspecting others who are innocent. In my opinion this is one of those cases where the truth, at any cost, is less damaging in the long run, to vague, festering conjecture. For you all must know,” Alleyn went on, “you must know even if you won’t acknowledge it…”—his glance rested fleetingly on Richard—“that this has been a case of homicide.”

He waited. Gantry said, “I don’t accept that,” but without much conviction.

“You will, I think, when I tell you that the Home Office analyst has found a trace of Slaypest in the bulb of the scent-spray.”

“Oh,” Gantry said faintly, as if Alleyn had made some quite unimportant remark. “I see. That’s different.”

“It’s conclusive. It clears up all the extraneous matter. The professional rows, the threats that you were all so reluctant to admit, the evasions and half-lies. The personal bickerings and antagonisms. They were all tidied away by this single fact.”

Marchant, whose hands were joined in front of his face, lifted his gaze for a moment to Alleyn. “You are not making yourself particularly clear,” he said.

“I hope to do so. This one piece of evidence explains a number of indisputable facts. Here they are. The scent-spray was harmless when Colonel Warrender used it on Mrs. Templeton. At some time before she went up to her room with Mr. Dakers, enough Slaypest was transferred to the scent-spray to kill her. At some time after she was killed the scent-spray was emptied and washed out and the remaining scent from the original bottle was poured into it. I think there were two, possibly three, persons in the house at that time who could have committed these actions. They are all familiar with the room and its appointments and surroundings. The presence of any one of them in her room would, under normal circumstances, have been unremarkable.”

A voice from outside the group violently demanded, “Where is she? Why hasn’t she been brought down to face it?” And then, with satisfaction, “Has she been taken away? Has she?”

Florence advanced into the light.

Richard cried out, “What do you mean, Floy? Be quiet! You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Where’s Clara Plumtree?”

“She will appear,” Alleyn said, “if the occasion arises. And you had better be quiet, you know.”

For a moment she looked as if she would defy him, but seemed to change her mind. She stood where she was and watched him.

“There is, however,” Alleyn said, “a third circumstance. You will all remember that after the speeches you waited down here for Mrs. Templeton to take her part in the ceremony of opening the presents. Mr. Dakers had left her in her room, passing Florence and Mrs. Plumtree on his way downstairs. Mrs. Plumtree had then gone to her room, leaving Florence alone on the landing. Mr. Templeton went from here into the hall. From the foot of the stairs he saw Florence on the landing and called up to her that you were all waiting for her mistress. He then rejoined the party here. A minute or so later Florence ran downstairs into this room and, after a certain amount of confused ejaculation, made it known that her mistress was desperately ill. Mr. Templeton rushed upstairs. Dr. Harkness, after a short delay, followed. With Florence, Colonel Warrender and Mr. Gantry hard on his heels.

“They found Mrs. Templeton lying dead on the floor of her room. The overturned tin of Slaypest lay close beside her right hand. The scent-spray was on the dressing-table. That has been agreed to, but I am going to ask for a further confirmation.”

Dr. Harkness said, “Certainly. That’s how it was.”

“You’d make a statement on oath to that effect?”

“I would.” He looked at Gantry and Warrender. “Wouldn’t you?”

They said uneasily that they would.

“Well, Florence?” Alleyn asked.

“I said before: I didn’t notice. I was too upset.”

“But you don’t disagree?”

“No,” she admitted grudgingly.

“Very well. Now, you will see, I think, all of you, that the whole case turns on this one circumstance. The tin of Slaypest on the floor. The scent-spray and the empty bottle on the dressing-table.”

“Isn’t it awful?” Pinky said suddenly. “I know it must be childishly obvious, but I just can’t bring myself to think.”

“Can’t you’?” Gantry said grimly. “I can.”

“Not having been involved in the subsequent discussions,” Marchant remarked to nobody in particular, “the nicer points must be allowed, I hope, to escape me.”

“Let me bring you up to date,” Alleyn said. “There was poison in the scent-spray. Nobody, I imagine, will suggest that she put it there herself or that she used the Slaypest on herself. The sound of a spray in action was heard a minute or so before she died. By Ninn — Mrs. Plumtree.”

“So she says,” Florence interjected.

Alleyn went on steadily, “Mrs. Templeton was alone in her room. Very well. Having used the lethal scent-spray, did she replace it on the dressing-table and put the Slaypest on the floor?”

Florence said, “What did I tell you? Clara Plumtree! After I went. Say she did hear the thing being used. She done it! She went in and fixed it all. What did I tell you!”

“On your own evidence,” Alleyn said, “and on that of Mr. Templeton, you were on the landing when he called up to you. You returned at once to the bedroom. Do you think that in those few seconds, Mrs. Plumtree, who moves very slowly, could have darted into the room, re-arranged the scent-spray, and Slaypest, darted out again and got out of sight?”

“She could’ve hid in the dressing-room. Like she done afterwards when she wouldn’t let me in.”

Alleyn said: “I’m afraid that won’t quite do. Which brings me to the fourth point. I won’t go into all the pathological details, but there is clear evidence that the spray was used in the normal way — at about arm’s length and without undue pressure — and then at very close quarters and with maximum pressure. Her murderer, finding she was not dead, made sure that she would die. Mrs. Plumtree would certainly not have had an opportunity to do it. There is only one person who could have committed that act and the three other necessary acts as well. Only one.”

“Florence!” Gantry cried out.

“No. Not Florence. Charles Templeton.”

The drawing-room now seemed strangely deserted. Pinky Cavendish, Montague Marchant, Dr. Harkness, Bertie Saracen and Timon Gantry had all gone home. Charles Templeton’s body had been carried away. Old Ninn was in her bed. Florence had retired to adjust her resentments and nurse her heartache as best she could. Mr. Fox was busy with routine arrangements. Only Alleyn, Richard, Anelida and Warrender remained in the drawing-room.

Richard said, “Ever since you told me and all through that last scene with them, I’ve been trying to see why. Why should he, having put up with so much for so long, do such a monstrous thing? It’s — it’s… I’ve always thought him — he was so…” Richard drove his fingers through his hair. “Maurice! You knew him. Better than any of us.”

Warrender, looking at his clasped hands, muttered unhappily, “What’s that word they use nowadays? Perfectionist?”

“But what do you… Yes. All right. He was a perfectionist, I suppose.”

“Couldn’t stand anything that wasn’t up to his own standard. Look at those T’ang figures. Little lady with a flute and little lady with a lute. Lovely little creatures. Prized them more than anything else in the house. But when the parlour-maid or somebody knocked the end off one of the little lute pegs, he wouldn’t have it. Gave it to me, by God!” said Warrender.

Alleyn said, “That’s illuminating, isn’t it?”

“But it’s one thing to feel like that and another to — No!” Richard exclaimed, “it’s a nightmare. You can’t reduce it to that size. It’s irreducible. Monstrous!”

“It’s happened,” Warrender said flatly.

“Mr. Alleyn,” Anelida suggested, “would you tell us what you think? Would you take the things that led up to it out of their background and put them in order for us? Might that help, do you think, Richard?”

“I think it might, darling. If anything can.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “shall I try? First of all, then, there’s her personal history. There are the bouts of temperament that have increased in severity and frequency — to such a degree that they have begun to suggest a serious mental condition. You’re all agreed about that, aren’t you? Colonel Warrender?”

“I suppose so. Yes.”

“What was she like thirty years ago, when he married her?”

Warrender looked at Richard. “Enchanting. Law unto herself. Gay. Lovely.” He raised his hand and let it fall. “Ah, well! There it is. Never mind.”

“Different? From these days?” Alleyn pursued.

“My God, yes!”

“So the musician’s lute was broken? The perfect had become imperfect?”

“Very well. Go on.”

“May we think back to yesterday, the day of the party? You must tell me if I’m all to blazes but this is how I see it. My reading, by the way, is pieced together from the statements Fox and I have collected from all of you and from the servants, who, true to form, knew more than any of you might suppose. Things began to go wrong quite early, didn’t they? Wasn’t it in the morning that she learnt for the first time that her…” He hesitated for a moment.

“It’s all right,” Richard said. “Anelida knows. Everything. She says she doesn’t mind.”

“Why on earth should I?” Anelida asked of the world at large. “We’re not living in the reign of King Lear. In any case, Mr. Alleyn’s talking about Husbandry in Heaven and me and how your mama didn’t much fancy the idea that you’d taken up with me and still less the idea of my reading for the part.”

“Which she’d assumed was written for her. That’s it,” Alleyn said. “That exacerbated a sense of being the victim of a conspiracy, which was set up by the scene in which she learnt that Miss Cavendish was to play the lead in another comedy and that Gantry and Saracen were in the ‘plot.’ She was a jealous, aging actress, abnormally possessive.”

“But not always,” Richard protested. “Not anything like always.”

“Getting more so,” Warrender muttered.

“Exactly. And perhaps because of that her husband, the perfectionist, may have transferred his ruling preoccupation from her to the young man whom he believed to be his son and on whom she was loath to relinquish her hold.”

“But did he?” Richard cried out. “Maurice, did he think that?”

“She’d — let him assume it.”

“I see. And in those days, as you’ve told us, he believed everything she said. I understand now,” Richard said to Alleyn, “why you agreed that there was no need to tell him about me. He already knew, didn’t he?”

“She herself,” Alleyn went on, “told Colonel Warrender, after the flare-up in the conservatory, that she had disillusioned her husband.”

“Did Charles,” Richard asked Warrender, “say anything to you afterwards? Did he?”

“When we were boxed up together in the study. He hated my being there. It came out. He was…” Warrender seemed to search for an appropriate phrase. “I’ve never seen a man so angry,” he said at last. “So sick with anger.”

“Oh God!” Richard said.

“And then,” Alleyn continued, “there was the row over the scent. He asked her not to use it. She made you, Colonel Warrender, spray it lavishly over her, in her husband’s presence. You left the room. You felt, didn’t you, that there was going to be a scene?”

“I shouldn’t have done it. She could always make me do what she wanted,” Warrender said. “I knew at the time but — isn’t it?”

“Never mind,” Richard said, and to Alleyn, “Was it then she told him?”

“I think it was at the climax of this scene. As he went out she was heard to shout after him, ‘Which only shows how wrong you were. You can get out whenever you like, my friend, and the sooner the better.’ She was not, as the hearer supposed, giving a servant the sack, she was giving it to him.”

“And half an hour later,” Richard said to Anelida, “there he was — standing beside her, shaking hands with her friends. I thought, when I was telephoning, he looked ill. I told you. He wouldn’t speak.”

“And then,” Anelida said to Alleyn, “came the scene in the conservatory.”

“Exactly. And, you see, he knew she had the power to make good her threats. Hard on the heels of the blow she had dealt him, he had to stand by and listen to her saying what she did say to all of you.”

“Richard,” Anelida said, “can you see? He’d loved her and he was watching her disintegrate. Anything to stop it!”

“I can see, darling, but I can’t accept it. Not that.”

“To put it very brutally,” Alleyn said, “the treasured possession was not only hideously flawed, but possessed of a devil. She reeked of the scent he’d asked her not to wear. I don’t think it would be too much to say that at that moment it symbolized for him the full horror of his feeling for her.”

“D’you mean it was then he did it?” Warrender asked.

“Yes. Then. It must have been then. During all the movement and excitement just before the speeches. He went upstairs, emptied out some of the scent and filled up the atomizer with Slaypest. He returned during the speeches. As she left the drawing-room she came face to face with him. Florence heard him ask her not to use the scent.”

Warrender gave an exclamation. “Yes?” Alleyn asked.

“Good God, d’you mean it was a — kind of gamble? If she did as he’d asked — like those gambles on suicide? Fella with a revolver. Half live, half blank cartridges.”

“Exactly that. Only this time it was a gamble in murder.” Alleyn looked at them. “It may seem strange that I tell you in detail so much that is painful and shocking. I do so because I believe that it is less damaging in the long run to know rather than to doubt.”

“Of course it is,” Anelida said quickly. “Richard, my dear, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Richard said. “I expect it is. Yes, it is.”

“Well, then,” Alleyn said, “immediately after he’d spoken to her, you came in. The photographs were taken and you went upstairs together. You tackled her about her treatment of Anelida, didn’t you?”

“It would be truer to say she attacked me. But, yes — we were both terribly angry. I’ve told you.”

“And it ended in her throwing your parentage in your teeth?”

“It ended with that.”

“When you’d gone she hurled your birthday present into the bathroom where it smashed to pieces. Instead of at once returning downstairs she went through an automatic performance. She powdered her face and painted her mouth. And then — well, then it happened. She used her scent-spray, holding it at arm’s length. The windows were shut. It had an immediate effect, but not the effect he’d anticipated.”

“What d’you mean?” Warrender asked.

“You’ve read the dictionary of poisons he bought. You may remember it gives a case of instant and painless death. But it doesn’t always act in that way.”

“He thought it would?”

“Probably. In this case, she became desperately ill. Florence came in and found her so. Do you remember what Charles Templeton said when Florence raised the alarm?”

Warrender thought for a moment. “Yes. I do. He said ‘My God, not now!’ I thought he meant ‘Not a temperament at this juncture.’ ”

“Whereas he meant ‘Not now. Not so soon.’ He then rushed upstairs. There was some delay in getting Harkness under way, wasn’t there?”

“Tight. Bad show. I put ice down his neck.”

“And by the time you all arrived on the scene, the Slaypest was on the floor and the atomizer on the dressing-table. And she was dead. He had found her as Florence had left her. Whether she’d been able to say anything that showed she knew what he’d done is a matter of conjecture. Panic, terror, a determination to end it at all costs — we don’t know. He did end it as quickly as he could and by the only means he had.”

There was a long silence. Anelida broke it. “Perhaps,” she said, “if it hadn’t happened as it did, he would have changed his mind and not let it happen.”

“Yes. It’s possible, indeed. As it was he had to protect himself. He had to improvise. It must have been a nightmare. He’d had a bad heart-turn and had been settled down in his dressing-room. As soon as he was alone; he went through the communicating door, emptied the atomizer into the lavatory, washed it out as best he could and poured in what was left of the scent.”

“But how do you know?” Richard protested.

“As he returned, Old Ninn came into the dressing-room. She took it for granted he had been in the bathroom for the obvious reason. But later, when I developed my theory of the scent-spray, she remembered. She suspected the truth, particularly as he had smelt of Formidable. So strongly that when Florence stood in the open doorway of the dressing-room she thought it was Ninn, and that she had been attempting to do the service which Florence regarded as her own right.”

“My poor old Ninn!” Richard cried.

“She, as you know, was not exactly at the top of her form. There had been certain potations, hadn’t there? Florence, who in her anger and sorrow, was prepared to accuse anybody of anything, made some very damaging remarks about you.”

“There’s no divided allegiance,” Richard said, “about Floy.”

“Nor about Ninn. She was terrified. Tonight she went into the study after Templeton had been put to bed there and told him that if there was any chance of suspicion falling on you, she would tell her story. He was desperately ill but he made some kind of attempt to get at her. She made to defend herself. He collapsed and died.”

Richard said, “One can’t believe these things of people one has loved. For Charles to have died like that.”

“Isn’t it better?” Alleyn asked. “It is better. Because, as you know, we would have gone on. We would have brought him to trial. Asit is, it’s odds on that the coroner’s jury will find it an accident. A rider will be added pointing out the dangers of indoor pest-killers. That’s all.”

“It is better,” Anelida said, and after a moment, “Mightn’t one say that he brought about his own retribution?” She turned to Richard and was visited by a feeling of great tenderness and strength. “We’ll cope,” she said, “with the future. Won’t we?”

“I believe we will, darling,” Richard said. “We must, mustn’t we?”

Alleyn said, “You’ve suffered a great shock and will feel it for some time. It’s happened and can’t be forgotten. But the hurt will grow less.”

He saw that Richard was not listening to him. He had his arm about Anelida and had turned her towards him.

“You’ll do,” Alleyn said, unheeded.

He went up to Anelida and took her hand. “True,” he said. “Believe me. He’ll be all right. To my mind he has nothing to blame himself for. And that,” Alleyn said, “is generally allowed to be a great consolation. Good-night.”

Miss Bellamy’s funeral was everything that she would have wished.

All the Knights and Dames, of course, and the Management and Timon Gantry, who had so often directed her. Bertie Saracen who had created her dresses since the days when she was a bit-part actress. Pinky Cavendish in floods, and Maurice, very Guardee, with a stiff upper lip.

Quite insignificant people, too: her old Ninn with a face like a boot and Florence with a bunch of primroses. Crowds of people whom she herself would have scarcely remembered, but upon whom, as a columnist in a woman’s magazine put it, she had at some time bestowed the gift of her charm. And it was not for her fame, the celebrated clergyman pointed out in his address, that they had come to say goodbye to her. It was, quite simply, because they had loved her.

And Richard Dakers was there, very white and withdrawn, with a slim, intelligent-looking girl beside him.

Everybody.

Except, of course, her husband. It was extraordinary how little he was missed. The lady columnist could not, for the life of her, remember his name.

Charles Templeton had, as he would have wished, a private funeral.

The End